August 6, 2018 7:22pm EDTAugust 6, 2018 1:56pm EDTMLB, New York Mets, NOPOPUPWally Backman has his legion of believers. Now it’s a matter of converting major league decision-makers.Wally Backman(New Britain Bees)

In November 2006, Wally Backman interviewed for the managerial vacancy with the Newark Bears of the independent Atlantic League.

Quite simply, he aced the interview, addressing baseball philosophy as well as past personal issues in an equally straightforward manner.

Backman checked off all the boxes for what the Bears sought in their new manager — not the least of which was the ticket sales and public relations boost the team would receive from bringing aboard the popular grinder from the 1986 World Series champion New York Mets, just 30 miles from where his best big-league triumphs took place.

However, Bears ownership believed Backman’s legal woes that cost him the Arizona Diamondbacks managerial position after only four days on the job a couple of years before trumped all the positives. Wally Backman did not get the gig in Newark.

In full disclosure, I know this as fact because I was the Bears assistant general manager at the time, in charge of baseball operations, tasked with building a team and, yes, hiring the manager. Backman was my guy, at least until team owners said otherwise.

Now, 12 years later, Backman is managing in the Atlantic League, with the New Britain Bees. It’s not where he expected to be, or wants to be, at the age of 58, especially after a largely successful seven-year run in the Mets organization that ended bitterly in 2016.

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“I have been kicked in the balls plenty of times, but I still do this (managing) because I love the competitiveness of it and I love the fact that I know I can really help the players,” Backman tells Sporting News while his Bees take batting practice on a beautiful summer baseball day.

“I like managing the game and putting players in a position to succeed, I don’t care what level of baseball it is.”

Backman has managed nearly 2,000 games at the minor league level and hundreds more in winter ball. He’s won three championships, finished in first place on multiple occasions, was named PCL Manager of the Year in 2014 and was Sporting News Minor League Manager of the Year in 2004.

There have been managerial stints with three affiliated organizations, five different independent leagues and a brief stint in Mexico last season. He was the Mets Triple-A manager for five consecutive seasons.

Then there’s this: It’s known throughout baseball that his players, by and large, love playing for Wally Backman.

“They play hard for Wally because he sticks up for them, defends them, goes to bat for them, prepares them and he works hard for them,” long-time Atlantic League front-office executive Mike Pfaff, a partner with the Bees, tells Sporting News.

His big-league resume as a player is impressive, as well. Backman was a lifetime .275 hitter over 14 years as a hustling, over-achieving second-baseman with five teams. He batted .320 for the powerhouse New York Mets in 1986, and .333 during the World Series that fall.

“It’s not about me having 14 seasons in the big leagues, and you do whatever the hell I tell you to do,” Backman says. “No, I’m going to earn their respect first by teaching them how to play the game right, putting them in positions to succeed and by always having their back.”

Yet, Backman has not managed nor coached a single game in the major leagues, discounting an end-of-season call up by the Mets to watch from Terry Collins’ bench.

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“I had one bad day in my life that has basically cost me, so far,” Backman says. “Some of the media people turned me into a (freaking) monster and that’s not who I am.

“That’s on me, I made a mistake. I dealt with it, I’ve lived with it, my family has had to live with it.”

Backman is refering to a 2001 incident which was termed a domestic dispute with his wife Sandi, one that — according to the police report — included Backman knocking down the door to his house and threatening her. There was also a heated, alcohol-fueled argument that followed with one of Sandi's friends, Sherrie Rhoden, that resulted in a gash to Rhoden's face and Backman suffering a broken forearm when Rhoden hit him with his 1986 World Series bat, police said.

“I never hit this woman, but this scar right here, I have a 10-inch plate in there,” Backman says while pointing to the streak going up his arm. “The bone was sticking out of my (freaking) arm. But when the story was reported, it was all about me. And once the story is out, people determine their own judgment on an individual.”

The incident, though, did not alter Backman’s rise up the managerial ranks, at least not initially. He skippered Double-A Birmingham in the White Sox organization to a pair of successful seasons before moving on to the Diamondbacks organization, where he piloted Single-A Lancaster to an 86-54 record in 2004.

On Nov. 1 of that year, Backman was introduced as the Diamondbacks new manager, his major league dream a reality at the age of 45. The dream quickly morphed into a nightmare, though. The next day, 10 paragraphs into a story about his hire, The New York Times mentioned the domestic dispute, his guilty plea for harassment and ensuing one day spent in jail, as well as a prior DUI arrest on Backman’s record and the fact that he filed for bankruptcy in 2003.

“My first reaction was, ‘Oh my God! This is going to come out now years after it happened and everybody should have known about it before,’” Backman says.

He was fired Nov. 5, never collecting a penny on his salary, having failed to actually sign a contract.

“The D-backs never asked,” says Backman, shaking his head. “It never crossed my mind to say anything because it happened several years previous and it was all public knowledge. So, if you do your background checks — which all teams do — they had to see it.”

Rhoden walked back some of her original testimony, others present — including Sandi — downplayed the 2001 incident at the Backman home as an argument that got out of hand, and Wally and Sandi remain married to this day. Local authorities and the Diamondbacks at the time saw things in a different light.

"Do I think it's fair?," Backman quietly asks. "No, because it was one day. What happened in the past is in the past. I was beyond that (when interviewing for the Diamondbacks job). That wasn't even in my mind anymore. It was a mistake, it happened."

Domestic disputes and violence are serious issues, and baseball is not immune from these real-world concerns. Just this season, closer Roberto Osuna served a 75-game suspension for an undisclosed domestic issue, was traded by the Blue Jays to the Astros as a result and still faces legal hurdles because of the situation. The Astros have faced backlash for acquiring Osuna, given his ongoing court case and the related allegations, with some accusing the team of hypocritically downplaying the seriousness of the issue and putting more value on wins than on decency.

Seven players have been suspended by MLB since 2016 because of domestic violence, including Aroldis Chapman, Jose Reyes, Jeurys Familia and — earlier this season — Jose Torres amd Steven Wright. One can assume Backman's past allegations would certainly come under intense scrutiny should he again be up for an MLB job.

After being fired by the Diamondbacks, Backman was out of baseball the next two seasons, finally emerging with the South Georgia Peanuts in the short-lived independent South Coast League in 2007 — a time best remembered for several infamous, profanity-filled tirades by the fiery Backman in a TV series about the team, “Playing for Peanuts.”

**NOTE: NSFW language repeated multiple times in video**

Championship in hand, Backman next went to Joliet of the independent Northern League for the next year and a half.

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“Everybody talks about second chances, but I haven’t been given a second chance,” says Backman, but that is only partially true.

Backman’s beloved Mets did give their hard-nosed former second baseman another opportunity to manage in affiliated ball from 2010 through 2016. However, despite interviewing for the major league manager’s job prior to the 2011 season, a big-league gig never transpired with the Mets.

“The Wilpons gave me the opportunity to come back, and I have total respect for that,” Backman says of Mets owner Fred Wilpon and his son Jeff, the club’s COO.

Backman managed the Brooklyn Cyclones to the New York-Penn League’s best record in 2010, preaching fundamentals and trying to instill a winning culture at the lowest level of the Mets farm system. He believed Jeff Wilpon helped hire him to one day become the Mets manager, but when it came time to interview for the deposed Jerry Manuel’s job after his first season back in affiliated ball, Sandy Alderson was the team’s new general manager, following the departure of Omar Minaya.

“Wally started at the bottom of the organization just to get back in and did great, eventually zooming through system, and he was really hanging his hat on that Jeff wanted him to be the next major league manager,” says Don Logan, the team president of the Mets’ Triple-A affiliate in Las Vegas.

“But then Sandy is hired to make those decisions and, if you know Sandy at all, he’s as strong minded a guy as there is.”

In other words, no one was going to tell Sandy Alderson who to hire.

So, Alderson hired Terry Collins and Backman worked his way up through the organization, a season at Double-A Binghamton and five seasons with Triple-A Buffalo and Las Vegas, bolstering his reputation as a player’s manager and one who prepared top prospects such as Michael Conforto, Wilmer Flores, Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard and Steven Matz, among others, to be major contributors and building blocks at the big-league level.

“Those guys all could play, but Wally made them better,” Logan says. "The Mets are not as good now as they were when Wally was part of the organization."

Backman adds, “I know one thing, those players learned how to play the game the right way from Day One with me. I take pride in that stuff because I want to make them fundamentally sound, and felt I did that really well for the Mets at Triple-A all those years. When they got to the big leagues, they were ready to go.”

Those who reached the majors under Backman all praised him for his nurturing and teaching. Members of the organization had nothing but good things to say about how well Backman prepared the young players for the majors.

“I thought he did a fine job for us,” Alderson told reporters in 2016. “We had many players come through Las Vegas and graduate to the major league level and establish themselves in New York. He was part of that development process. He did a good job for us.”

Partially as a result of Backman’s deft handling of key prospects, the Mets reached the World Series in 2015 and were wild-card entrants in the 2016 postseason.

Yet, when openings on Collins’ staff needed to be filled — third base coach one year, bench coach another — Backman interviewed, thought he was getting the gig, and then ultimately returned to Triple-A.

“Sandy asked me in a conversation we had in Terry’s office if there was going to be a conflict of interest if I coached in the majors,” Backman says. “Like I told Terry earlier, I said if I’m Terry’s third-base coach or whatever, I have his back, I’m all in.

“Do I want the opportunity to manage some day? I hope so, that’s what I want to do. But I’m not going to stab any manager in the back ever. That’s a rule. You do that, you’re out.”

Logan always believed that Collins and Backman would have worked well together if given the chance.

"They had a great baseball guy in New York with Tery Collins," says Logan. "But if you had blended Wally in with Terry, you would have had an even better situation."

Backman continued to do a quality job in Las Vegas, though he found it curious that when his name popped up in news articles about managerial vacancies with the Marlins and Rays, interviews were never conducted. He suspects Alderson was behind that in some way, perhaps denying requests to interview him. The Mets did not comment for this story.

“Wally manages around him and downward as well as anybody, but if there is something he needs to think about it’s how he manages upward,” says Logan, speaking to the strained relationship with Alderson and other front office executives in the Mets organization.

Word leaked during the 2016 season that Backman was rogue, not adhering to the wishes of upper management. Examples sprouted up in the press, such as Backman refusing to bat Brandon Nimmo at the top of the order regularly enough or not letting Conforto hit against left-handed starters enough.

The numbers do not bear that out, though. Nimmo appeared in 97 games that season for Las Vegas and batted either first or second 84 times. Conforto had 87 at-bats against right-handers that same year and 41 against lefties in his brief time spent at Triple-A, batting .488 against left-handed pitching.

“It’s true, I batted Nimmo eighth a couple times, and you know why? There was a tough left-handed pitcher on the mound and I protected the kid, one of our top prospects,” Backman says. “You manage to put players in position to succeed. You don’t want to kill him.”

Backman resigned after the 2016 season. He has not had a single interview since for a job with an affiliated organization, and said Alderson blackballed him.

Using that term, blackballed, likely backfired for the emotional Backman.

“I told Wally I didn’t agree when he felt like he was being buried,” says Logan, who remains an ardent supporter of Backman. “I’ve known Sandy longer than I’ve known Wally. I don’t think Sandy would do that. So, I think that was stupid for Wally to say that.”

Collins was replaced by Mickey Callaway after an ugly 2017 season. An even uglier 2018 is well on its way to another 90-loss season in Flushing, and Alderson stepped aside from his duties as GM to tend to health issues.

“I thought I was in line to succeed Terry and that didn’t happen. I don’t wish anyone bad luck at all, but sure is funny all of a sudden there was something wrong with my performance and then I’m gone with Terry having one year left before he’s gone.”

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When the 2018 baseball season ends, Backman plans to contact affiliated organizations and send out resumes. Again. This time, the twist is that he’s open to becoming a minor league field coordinator — in charge of an organization’s entire minor league operation and, ultimately, player development — as well as a minor league or major league manager.

“I think there is a path to the major leagues for Wally Backman,” he says. “I want to get in front of some of the new people who don’t know me. I’m going to want to want to talk about work ethic. I’m going to want to talk about communication. I’m going to want to talk about strategy. I’m going to want them to know everything about me.”

That includes discussing his past — the good, the bad, the ugly. The championships won and development of top players, as well as the ejections and suspensions, the Diamondbacks and the Mets.

“We’ve all got a wart or two, and Wally certainly does, too, but in terms of deserving a chance to get back, I would hope somebody is smart enough to give him a crack,” Logan says.

Viewed as “old-school,” Backman also wants to shed some perceptions of him as a manager and a communicator.

“I was using sabermetrics before others were using it, just like how (his former Mets manager) Davey Johnson did,” he says. “Those numbers, if you use them in the proper way for your team, it works. There’s good statistics and bad statistics, and it’s up to you to know which is which.”

Adds Logan, “The perception is that he’s an old-school, crusty, shot-and-a-beer baseball guy, and that couldn’t be further from the truth. He is always thinking ahead, always in the numbers, looking for any advantage.

“But you still need a personal touch because it’s people playing the game. He understands that; and that’s why a guy like Wally should be in the majors.”

For Backman it all circles back to winning. Minors, majors, the bottom line is winning. He loves to win, despises losing.

“The one thing from Davey Johnson I try to teach the players I have every year is you’ve got to learn to hate to lose more than you like to win,” Backman says. “It’s got to be very personal.”

Backman has his legion of believers. Now it’s a matter of converting major league decision-makers.

“He’s a winner, and that never goes out of style in baseball,” Pfaff says. “So, I think he will get a chance, and I hope it’s soon.”